Category: Blogging for Noobs

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History Will Teach us Nothing

When your life is altered by something that you’d had no intention of allowing to happen, your routine (such as it is) can become a bit useless. The timing of this new push into historic trauma using poetry as the delivery system is, in a certain light, less than optimal. However, ignoring it has the potential to make my personal life a lot more difficult than it needs to be in a period where that is absolutely NOT what needs to happen. As a result? Everything is being used as a potential learning experience. That means today we are writing about history.

Yesterday, I engaged with the writer of a feature detailing the ‘best’ raiding content [*] in World of Warcraft. As the game is constantly changing and evolving, deciding the best of anything at distance can seem a bit of a pointless exercise. After all, looking at something that was great back in 2005 and then attempting to compare it to something that’s been created in 2023, when so much has altered in terms of performance, graphical improvement and simple game system overhauls… how can you possibly do anything justice without factoring in the context?

This Guide covers the last Expansion I played before I left the game.

When the makers of World of Warcraft decided to reboot and relaunch the original ‘Classic’ game a few years ago, they were very much aware of why this mattered, and how potentially significant that revamp would be. It wasn’t necessarily about attracting new players, either: the ‘original’ template remains ‘free’ to all existing purchasers of the current game. Their plan appeared simple: reproduce an experience of the original 2004 release and encourage players to buy back into a world many of them had never experienced, because they were more concerned about getting to the most recent Expansion instead to play with their friends.

Except, by doing so, a very significant portion of the game’s own evolutionary path was summarily erased.

There’s been a lot of thought, as I write about the 2005 to 2009 period, over reactivating my old account and going back into Classic: except, of course, it’s not the same game. However much I may be told this is an authentic experience, that’s not true, and it never will be. I am being sold that most seductive of marketing dummies, in the hope that I’ll be retained as a player and that all-important monthly sub will find its way back into the company’s coffers. Not going back is a good thing. There are many good reasons, as will become clear as the poems in this project make it out of my brain and onto the page.

Ion Hazzikostas was, like me, A Classic Player, but he ended up joining Activision Blizzard and designing the game….

Classic has been reduced to a manageable footnote by the game’s designers, many of which found their jobs in the company playing that iteration. Our experiences were vastly different, and the history I bring to the table will be a very long way from that which is fondly remembered by them. Does that make my moments any less valuable? Of course, it doesn’t, but because of how they happened and the consequences of them in relation to the game, that history is again sublimated into something else. It seems incredibly important for my experiences, as a result, to be presented as history and context with the proper backdrop to frame it.

Poets are supposed to let readers fathom out what’s going on in their work, at least 90 percent of the time. There are those such as Jonathan Davidson who espouse a more didactic approach to the process, that there should be an explanation when context is not easily presentable, or the subject is particularly niche. This has been the biggest single quandary in creating a timeline that marries game events to real life events. Yesterday was the first day when I felt there’d been a solid, cohesive process in drawing a walkable path from then to now.

What matters most of all right now however isn’t what happens with the work, it is the creating of it. However, as this happens, I find myself increasingly needing to explain the processes as I go: not just to myself, but as a means of making sure the chronology remains both correct and accessible, so I am going to start blogging about Warcraft again. This was how I saved my soul back in 2009. To go back to it felt counterintuitive for a while but, at my heart, I am a storyteller. I never thought my own narratives would have any relevance.

It transpires this is a very long way from the current truth these poems present me with.

[*] Raiding content is where 10-40 people (depending on expansion) all play together in an attempt to down ‘boss encounters’ where the computer adversaries are considerably more powerful than normal.

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How Will I Know?

Those of you following me on the Socials will be aware I’m doing a bit more exercise than has previously been the case. This began with a post-Christmas burst which made me realise that the only thing holding me back from real, tangible progress is myself. It is very easy to let good habits slip when all you want to do is wear PJ’s and eat chocolate, but the older I get the harder it has become to maintain the consistency I crave. Therefore, it is time to adapt.

There’s still a bar of chocolate wound into my workouts. The occasional treat is perfectly admissible. This isn’t about only drinking protein shakes and boring people senseless with the power of positive thinking. It is knowing that, at some point, you just need to shut the fuck up and do the work. That’s the case for the writing too: November’s NaNo went out to people to read and this is, without doubt, the most positive feedback I’ve ever received. Even the dislikes are positive.

Therefore, it was time to do something with it.

It’s been entered for a contest I doubt we’ll make traction in, but for the first time a 10k submission actually looked like a story I’d like to read, not just something with a niche interest window. I’ve also been given some brilliant late-plot feedback that means there’ll be stuff added once the current poetry project’s past first draft and needs to have a rest. I’d not expected that to do what it has to my brain either, and so we’ll be working on that for a bit longer than anticipated, but no worries. Exercise is helping me think on the go.

I don’t expect any of this to be successful, so if it happens I will be beyond surprised. However, what this does do is allow me the opportunity to believe that this is the right path to be treading, and that the decisions that are being made, make sense. It’s as much about self-confidence as it will ever be about success. In the end, there has to be a method of self-propulsion that doesn’t require other people as fuel. It transpires words can move you forward.

Who knew?

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First Steps

I’m having some quite serious issues with not only publishing my work via social media, but getting that social media to inform me what is being seen. It could almost be considered part of a larger malaise where blogs generally are only of interest if you’re selling something, won a Thing or are posting cute pictures of animals. Obtaining and holding people’s interest is a tough ask right now. It makes me wonder where I should be going next.

Those thoughts have filled my head this week, and we have a plan for the exercise and personal parts of my life, but not yet for the professional. Things that were expected to happen this week haven’t and so there’s been a decision to put off making any more changes to that side of things until I’ve cleared my backlog of work, which will happen by the end of next week. After that, reassessment happens.

It’ll be quiet here until then, with a lot of background gubbins going on regardless.

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Airbag

Everything for next month is gonna get done quite late, far more than I’d really like. Of all the things that ought to be fixed in the business of organisation, it is this pre-planning which could really do with the most attention. However, over five weeks the entire process has improved enormously. One of the benefits of exercise every day has undoubtedly been a massive uptick in overall productivity.

That means that in February we’re gonna give Instagram another poke in terms of trying to build an audience. I have no idea whether it will work or not, but my basic understanding of hashtags should give a bit of a head start. It also helps possessing some neophyte design skills, which should stand me in good stead. I’ve already drawn a line over last month’s content… so, let’s see where it all goes.

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I get the whole thing about identity and cohesion, so ‘building a brand’ should not be impossible, if there’s content. My biggest problem right now is ensuring that happens without anything else suffering as a result. That means there are now three planners up on the wall to my right: not just writing, but exercise too. There’s a blog post coming up about what I’ve learnt this month about aiming for realistic goals.

An awful lot has changed since the end of December. For the first time in many years, pretty much all of it is positive. Sure, there are still fairly substantive diversions that take place: in order to avoid finishing this blog, for instance, I’ve managed to tick off two highly important subsidiary tasks from the ‘Do When You get a Chance’ List. It’s amazing what I’ll throw in my path when it comes to avoiding the obvious.

In the end, however, far more than was previously the case, shit does now get done.

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Begin Again

To give me a bit of a break from thinking too much about new things, this month’s become a period of recycling. The short story currently running on Twitter, for instance, has sat on my hard drive since forever. The poetry that will appear over the weekend was originally written this time last year (or thereabouts) and has undoubtedly benefited from a second look-over.

It makes me realise just how much has changed in a relatively short space of time.

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I knew the last week was going to be tough going, with a notable couple of rejections highlighting that however good poetry might seem to be, other people need to agree. Winning stuff is horribly hit and miss at the best of times, which is why this month is also about trying to pick up some feedback about how to best package my work going forward. However, there’s still a lot of potential on the board, and I really haven’t been at this very long.

Probably the most important skill that’s been grasped since this time last year is the need to listen to my ‘voice’ within poetry: reading aloud, things sound considerably different than when written ‘cold.’ It’s been a process that, I’ll grant you, has taken some getting used to. Training my brain to work in a fashion which is often largely counter-intuitive was the hardest ask of all, however. This where mental shortcomings really became apparent.

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Going back to old work therefore highlights my shortcomings (I thought it was enough a year ago for it to just fit syllable counts) and pushes brain to find better ways of doing the same stuff again. It also reminds me that, scattered across notebooks and in other places there’s a ton of half-finished poetry that I should frag together to construct a new collection. None of this is bad, it all just requires thought.

That’s the killer, of course: finding the right kind of thought to fit each day, situations that I find myself within. The story work I’m doing has stalled because, of all things, a poem that is included as part of the narrative. New work is hard, but going back to old work has a ring of familiarity and comfort to it which is, I hope, allowing me to expand brain’s capacity and capability.

By the end of the month, we’ll see if this change of approach has made a difference to my ability .

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Free as a Bird

On my day (which let’s face it is most of them) I am a world class procrastinator. The problem with this, looking at the calendar, is that we’re already three months into 2019 and this bid for World domination is not going to move itself. So, how do you push past failure and remain focused?

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The top of those two monthly planners (intentionally blurred so you don’t get to see what I’m working on) has a very clear set of outlines. Next week, without fail, I was gonna push out some poetry (despite telling myself I was done for a bit, which was clearly a lie.) Except this morning, whilst desperately looking for a way to avoid having to tidy up, brain informed the Poetry Department it had a couple of rather useful lead-ins to the work that needs to be done. An hour later, I’ve written two out of four of my initial submission plan.

What occurred to me as I was hoovering up the floor avoided an hour previously was the rearrangement of mental priorities which is freeing up more creativity. What used to be the case is that there’d be no real grasp of what needed to happen when: this would lead to a ton of last minute panics, with work being rushed. If there’d been sufficient planning, more effort could have been put in at the outset. Having used wall planners now for about six months, it’s a far more effective means of getting deadlines to stick, and not panicking over outcomes.

The visual is a really big deal, which should have been more obvious than it was. There’s a third planner up on the wall, a 12 month one, on which deadlines are slowly being filled.It allows my brain the space to grasp what there is to do, what’s coming and where everything fits together. It also, crucially, allows me to plan for surprises. That’s what, if I can do something well before a deadline, it is far more sensible than leaving everything until a week before when inevitably, there’s more pressure.

It transpires that this is how I work best.

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Of course, none of this wins me anything, but that’s perfectly fine. The satisfaction I now feel in being able to manage and feel comfortable in my own skin, to recover from disappointment to get back into the process of writing is worth considerably more to mental well-being long-term. In that regard, this is far more significant a win than anything else that’s likely to happen for a while.

Finally, there’s a freedom just to be that didn’t exist before.

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The Numbers

I went and ate cake with my bestie this weekend, in the place where in approximately three weeks time there’ll probably be about ninety seconds at a microphone. They all count, of course, and it is a moment I’m already looking forward to with a measure of anticipation. This is the success to be celebrated. I’ve spoken about rejection already this month, but there is one part of the equation that’s not been considered, and that is feedback.

Do you really want to know how good or bad something is after you post it?

The overriding problem with the endless rounds of contest entries is never knowing why you failed, only that you did. Asking for someone for feedback is, if truth be known, a mugs’ game. What one person might consider good another will pour scorn on from high. Getting stressed about generic feedback is also a one way trip to destroying what few shreds of confidence you might possess. So, is it worth it? Yes, sometimes it is. If the feedback comes from someone you trust? Absolutely it’s worth it.

Should I worry about how many people liked my post? Absolutely not. The only real feedback that matters, in that case, is the person who compliments you on a decent phrase or passage, suggesting a better addition as a metaphor. Nobody ever does that here, it’s just a generic ‘like’ and if you wonder why I very rarely do the same to anybody else’s posts, there’s your reason. I only REALLY like things that make me go ‘wow, that’s GREAT.’

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If it gets that from me, you are fairly likely to get detailed analysis too, in the vain hope one day someone else might do the same. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, this might become the new trend: people turn up and offer unprompted feedback.

Stranger things have happened…

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Another One Bites the Dust

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It was coming. There shouldn’t be any surprise at all, on reflection, and (quite usefully) this latest piece of news was learnt after I’d done the incredibly mentally draining ‘thing’ for the day and therefore, it couldn’t make anything worse. Nobody wants to be told they’re not good enough, especially in the current climate. Rejection’s an inevitable part of the writing process, and people deal with that differently. For me, it is normally quite funny, especially if (as was the case this time) it is accompanied by a staggeringly generic ‘we’re sorry you didn’t win and we can’t tell you why but WELL DONE ANYWAY’ email.

Today however it made me quite angry.

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Most contests are lotteries for one reason alone: the people you’re trying to impress. It’s not like you’re judged to a standard either: if we all had to write twelve haiku, three acrostics and only in dactyls, before doing it again in evening wear whilst solving world hunger, it might be different. Everybody’s got their own idea of what is ‘good’ with half an eye on the marketplace: knowing what will sell, what they can promote, who are the current on trend writers driving tastes.

It might be unpalatable to some, but this is business just like games and films and art, and if you get lucky and mesh with someone, it is no guarantee of instant or long term success. You could well spend your entire time entering contests or funding your own work and not one person will know who you are until you die and someone discovers your legacy. That happens, and knowing this is probably a huge influence on why any negative emotion is always short lived, then transformed into something far more useful.

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I don’t get the satisfaction of fame after my demise. I’m here now, loving every moment whilst simultaneously railing at sanctimony that undoubtedly accompanies a lot of writers who feel they are somehow owed something for their struggle. Nobody owes you anything. This should not be about the commercial success you obtain from your effort. If you aren’t here to do this for enjoyment and satisfaction in the first instance, I have to say, you’re on a hiding to nothing, unless you are spectacularly lucky, and trust me when I say I know how unlikely that is ever going to be.

Sure you can make a living as a writer, and lots of people do, but not without a phenomenal amount of hard work, savings, second jobs, support from family, understanding friends and that’s even before luck gets introduced into the equation. For me, coming up for nearly two years of doing this properly, there’s the knowledge that success is not at all tied to someone else liking your work. You have to be learning, adapting and refining, constantly exercising brain and words together. It is like exercise, only without the lumpy bits and sweaty gym kit.

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There will be WTF moments too: some are brilliant, others will test your diplomacy skills. However, there is but one thing to remember when in such situations: be kind. Nobody likes a smartarse, or someone overly full of their own importance. Just be polite, honest and think before you speak. This bit is like being on the Internet right now, and knowing that sometimes the best thing you can do for everybody is just let the stupid pass you by. With #MeToo very much on the radar, the lines that shouldn’t be crossed are even more defined.

Seriously, just be a decent human being about all of this. You fail, you lick your wounds, then up you get and start again. If writing matters enough, you move past the rejection and use it as fuel, propelling you forward.

When you do fail, remember you’re not alone.

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Was It Worth It?

Once upon a time, I got quite obsessed over the number of people who followed me on social media. This coincided with Twitter’s public and high profile attempts to remove the legions of robots and fake accounts from their platform. The reality of this change is pretty stark: I’ve seen zero follower growth since April 2018 on the ‘other’ account. Ironically, this was the exact period that this project began to gain momentum: interest here is far and beyond what was ever thought possible in such a short period.

In my lessons and observations of Social media over the last few years, there’s been a veritable legion of people in the background, advising me how to ‘influence’ in all its forms. What is abundantly apparent is that the best success stories, people who genuinely deserve all the plaudits and numbers on their teams are those individuals who do, in fact, put in the hard graft. It doesn’t have to be sitting on Social media, either. The right combination of immediacy and backroom work pays massive dividends.

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I do love me some good organisation, but in the end none of it is worth the Post It notes you wrote it on unless summat budges. I’m pretty sure now the path that was originally trodden with what’s now very much a personal Twitter is the absolute opposite direction things need to head: if anything, I’d be going backwards. So, it is time to stop selling myself, and to start ‘selling’ myself. Those two quote marks are actually quite vital too. Before it was all far to serious. Now, if summat good happens, it’s a bonus, but honestly I’m not fussed.

Last time out, there was an agenda and I HATE THOSE. I’m not an influencer, just a woman with stuff to say and her own shit to sell. Not anybody else’s mouthpiece or spokesperson, just my words and stories that need to be told and might well find a larger audience if I push them. So, here we go. Gonna give it a year and see where we go. If all else fails, I might luck out and get summat published in the meantime, who knows?

It gives me something to do apart from the housework and exercise, if all else fails…

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Nobody Does it Better

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We are living in a Procedural World
and I am a Procedural Girl…

I absolutely ADORE a good TV Detective show. Ironically, I’ve not seen a Sherlock episode (but with Christmas coming that will hopefully be amended) but have managed a fair number of CSI‘s in my time [all flavours.] Right now I’m using Amazon to trawl my way through the NCIS back catalogue. Really, honestly, I’ll take anything if it a) makes me think and b) has decent ensemble chemistry. That’s the most important factor in my TV watching. All these people have to look like they would really get on.

As a kid I can remember Hill Street Blues and Ironside, Quincy and Columbo with fondness. Satellite TV also allows me the luxury of trawling back through historical gems such as Poirot and the various incarnations of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, though nothing really beats Margaret Rutherford’s superlative filmic incarnation of the character… part of a Saturday afternoon tradition that became a significant part of my early years.

This is part of the reason why good stories matter to me far more than just special effects and surface imagery when translated to film or TV: there is a phenomenal amount of my past built from such narratives, and the desire to place human interest above the ridiculous or overly distracting. I have written a couple of murder mysteries in my time, but amazingly this genre isn’t one I feel could ever have decent justice done to it (pun very much intended.)

This is very much in the ‘enjoyment, not a job’ part of existence, and long may that continue…

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